U.S. teacher Kevin Leatherbarrow holds a licence to carry a concealed weapon and doesn’t see anything wrong with arming teachers in the aftermath of the deadly Connecticut school shooting.

Joanna Baginska (right), a fourth grade teacher at Odyssey Charter School in American Fork, Utah is shown how to handle a 40 cal. Sig Sauer by firearm instructor Clark Aposhian at a concealed-weapons training class offered to 200 Utah teachers on December 27, 2012 in West Valley City, Utah. The Utah Shooting Sports Council said it would waive its $50 fee for concealed-weapons training for Utah teachers.

SALT LAKE CITY—U.S. teacher Kevin Leatherbarrow holds a licence to carry a concealed weapon and doesn’t see anything wrong with arming teachers in the aftermath of the deadly Connecticut school shooting.

“You don’t have a chance in hell,” said Leatherbarrow. “You’re dead.”

Gun-rights advocates agree and were offering up six hours of training Thursday in handling concealed weapons for 200 Utah teachers in the latest effort to arm teachers.

In Ohio, a firearms group said it was launching a test program in tactical firearms training for 24 teachers. The Arizona attorney general is proposing a change to state law to allow an educator in each school to carry a gun.

The moves come after the country’s most powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, proposed placing an armed officer at each of the nation’s schools.

The NRA offered its much-criticized proposal after President Barack Obama demanded “real action, right now” on gun violence. He asked Vice-President Joe Biden to lead a group that is expected to offer suggestions that Obama can send to Congress in January.

There are already police officers in some of the nation’s 98,000 schools. Parents and educators, however, have questioned how safe the NRA proposal would keep kids, whether it would be economically feasible and how it would alter student life.

Some educators say it is dangerous to allow guns. Among the dangers are teachers being overpowered for their weapons or students getting them and accidentally or purposely shooting classmates.

“It’s a terrible idea,” said Carol Lear, a chief lawyer for the Utah Office of Education. “It’s a horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten idea.”

Utah educators say they would ban guns if they could, but legislators left them with no choice. State law forbids schools, districts or college campuses from imposing their own gun restrictions.

Educators say they have no way of knowing how many teachers are armed. Gun-rights advocates estimate 1 per cent of Utah teachers, or 240, are licensed to carry concealed weapons. It’s not known how many do so at school.

Gun-rights advocates say teachers can act more quickly than law enforcement in the critical first few minutes to protect children from the kind of deadly shooting that took place in Connecticut.

“We’re not suggesting that teachers roam the halls” for an armed intruder, said Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the state’s leading gun lobby. “They should lock down the classroom. But a gun is one more option if the shooter” breaks into a classroom, he said.

Utah is among few states that let people carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools without exception, the National Conference of State Legislatures says in a 2012 compendium of state gun laws.

Leatherbarrow said he often felt threatened while working at an inner-city school in New York state, where he got a licence to carry a pistol. He moved less than a year ago to Utah, where he feels safer.

But he said gun violence can break out anywhere.

“I’m in agreement not everybody should be carrying firearms in school. They’re not trained,” he said. “But for some parents to think we’re cowboys, that frustrates me. I wish parents would understand.”